Houde Qing Bing

Hi,did anyone try the Qing Bing which recently appeared at Houde? It seems suspiciously cheap. Also, it is strange that it's said to cost $450-640, when, according to Mr. Cloud, it went over $1500. It seems to me that the price can go anywhere up, but hardly this down...

If it's the same one he used to sell, I think it's pretty good, though I know some will disagree (I have heard a few people complain about the storage). One of the first aged pu'ers I ever had. I think there were two different batches.

Did he put up whole cakes at the price you mentioned? If my math is right, $27.50/10g puts it at about $1k/cake, which I think sounds reasonable, though lower than some places.

It was around $600/ cake in maybe '07 (and, if you'll notice, his description still mentions the old market value).

One thing to keep in mind is that not all "88 qing bing" out there is actually from BTH - some people will sell 7542 from that time period with relatively dry storage as "88 qing bing". Also, he may have been sitting on this for a while.

Broadly speaking, I suspect that the 88QingBing is overrated. You want to spend $30 on a pot, go after the 90s Lan Yin. I have not had either (I don't think so), so truckload of salt with that assertion.

tst: I might try it eventually. My last order from Houde did not turn out as good as I wanted, but I could try once more.

wyardley: Well, I read " sold currently", which sounds rather non-historical...

shah: The Qing Bing I had from EoT was really very good, did not taste overrated to me (and I think I'm more or less immune to "this is famous, gotta be awesome" factor). If nothing more, it tasted&felt significantly better than the only marginally cheaper dry stored 8653.

JakubT wrote:wyardley: Well, I read " sold currently", which sounds rather non-historical...

He's basically resurrected an old listing, making more of the samples available without editing the description much or at all. I'm sure this is not intentional, since, as you say, the current market price is higher.

The quoted market price there is from maybe 2007 or before (when the tea was originally listed), and the sample price at that time was based on that. I would say the current sample price is at or below market price.

But "market price" really could be variable. If you buy direct from BTH, it will be in excess of $2200 US probably, though someone else may have more up to date information. And any of the original stock which BTH sold to vendors in Taiwan probably is also worth something close to that. But if we're talking relatively cleanly stored 7542 from that time period (late 80s / early 90s), I think you can find something in the realm of what he's selling it for now.

Also, presumably this is an extra piece that he's had sitting around and has now broken up, so he would likely have bought it when it was available more cheaply.

In any event, I think this is a wise thing to pick up, since there probably isn't a lot more of it, and it's fairly priced.

Houde isn't currently selling samples of any of the great XZH, with the exception of the Jingmai. I love it, but plenty of other people are not fond of Jingmai, and other people don't think of it as a good example of an elite Jingmai, being that Jingmai has roughly two styles of character.

These, of course, are not quite the elite of what Sanhetang can bring. I like the Huangshanlin very much though. You want to find the 2007 special editions, released in the fall, DianGu, XiShangMeiShao, JingGu Nuer, and Puzhen. You want to find the '05 and '06 products, since as far as any of us knows in the West, none of them are weak products, not even the LBZs. 2008 products have very little press, even in Taiwan, and I gauge 2009 to be an excellent year. Not blown away by anything produced later, though.

JakubT, I say that the cake is overrated because much of the price is largely because it's a big and liquid stock of dry-stored tea, which is overall, pretty rare. The basic material isn't really that special, especially in retrospect to teas made around 1985 and earlier, or the later teas like the Lan Yins, the '01 Simplified Yun, the 208s, the Jin Dayi 301 and 302, things like that.

shah82 wrote:wyardley, the price of 88QingBing is $8k on the Vancouver BTH site.

Well, $8k is definitely "in excess of $2200 US". I hadn't looked there recently. I would bet that it can be had for less than that, especially in HK, but probably still for a very high cost. Let's say, $6k, perhaps. That's a big increase from 2007, when I think it was around $1000-1200.

At $2k, $5k, $8k, or whatever, I absolutely agree with you that it's an overvalued tea.

However, we're talking about the Hou De samples here, which works out to more like $1k/cake, and also available in 10g increments. At that point, I feel like value is less of an issue.